


Kindling

by SixEyedSoul



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Angst, Discrimination, Drabble, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27550873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SixEyedSoul/pseuds/SixEyedSoul
Summary: A short drabble about the aftermath of Galo and Lio saving the world and how many fires weren’t extinguished.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Kudos: 26





	Kindling

Though the Burnish’s flames have long since been put out, fire still exists in many hearts. For some it is the fires of rebirth, the fires that burn brightest when confronted with the destruction that came with salvation. Their fire feeds on erecting new buildings, clearing old rubble. For others, it is the fire of life that came so close to being extinguished. They need nothing but the knowledge that they could have been reduced to ash, and they are fueled. But for others the flames of hate still burn brightest. Some flames cling so stubbornly, long after they should have been burnt out. 

“Dirty Burnish bastard!” The insult engraves itself in his skin the same as the pain of the kick that connects with his ribs. He curls around himself, coughing into the cold ground until the air is stolen from him yet again, with a kick to the stomach. “It's because of you that the world fell apart!”

And he supposes that they're right. If the Promare hadn't began to commune with the Burnish, if they had not begged them to burn so brightly, perhaps the world would have burnt itself out with no one to blame. But there must always be someone to blame, and it may as well be him. The Burnish will always be hated, even though their hateful power has been stripped from them, but as long as his brothers and sisters aren't hated... maybe it's good that his is such a recognizable face.

The leader of the Mad Burnish, a man who will never again be able to blend in to society. Maybe the flames have abandoned him, but he will always be remembered as the face of a hated race. They can't hate what they can't see, and the Burnish are now neighbors, friends, indistinguishable. He alone is left to face the hatred of humanity.

Lio tries to hold his arms over his head, but they only grab his hair. He no longer has the fire, and his meager strength is nothing compared to the rage of three men. Even if it was, he doubts he would fight. They may have saved earth from burning up, but they didn't save the millions who lost their homes, those whose entire lives were uprooted and destroyed because of a random cosmological convergence over thirty years ago. 

This is a form of penance he decides, as fists fly into his stomach, his ribs, his eyes. A penance for his sorrow at the loss of the Promare. These men hate the flames and those who housed them. Who is he to miss the quiet voice of his flames, or the fact that he was never cold or alone? Penance is just this: being cold, and alone, and made to atone for the suffering that neither he nor his fellow Burnish caused. 

His head lolls on a neck that no longer has the strength to support it, and he wonders if his body will still turn to ash though it no longer burns. And then he is falling to the cold ground, crumpling to lie in a heap. There is noise above him, but his ears ring too loud for him to understand it. Likely, he's heard it all before on the lips of those who've always hated the Burnish.

The cold seeps into him quickly, making him shiver weakly, his teeth chatter out a discordant rhythm. At the very least, he reasons, the cold is good for numbing the pain that the fire can no longer take away. Part of his wonders if the Promare are like deities, if they still watch over him from their parallel star. Do they mourn for him now, as they did when they rested in his chest?

When the next hand touches him it's so gentle that he thinks he must be hallucinating. It cradles his cheek and speaks his name. It sounds like it is weeping. It burns his cracked and freezing flesh, and he curls into it. The Promare have returned for him, and he will not be alone again. 

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left you alone.” They apologize, and the hand turns into two, which lift him up as if he is precious and delicate and important. The warmth curls around him and is solid against his side. It pulls the cold away slowly and speaks to him in a voice he knows nearly as well as that of the Promare. It apologizes again and again, and he thinks that it must have started raining at some point, because rain drops light on his cheeks. A rain that won't put him out. A rain that burns.

Slowly, he curls into the warmth. It's not the Promare, and never will be again, but this warmth... 

He wraps arms that obey him too sluggishly around Galo’s neck, pressing his face into the crook of his neck until it hurts. The arms around him tighten slightly, and he recalls the feeling of the warmth he'd known all his life slipping out of his fingertips. Now, he is always cold, and not as strong as he had always been. But though the Promare may have left him, whatever burns within Galo Thymos seems to be inextinguishable.

“I wish my kindling weren't so damp,” he mutters, and wonders when he'd stopped making sense. 

But Galo has never been a man who makes sense, so he just bundles Lio tighter against his chest. “That's okay. We can find some more kindling together, and I'll stay close. That way it'll catch when it's ready.” 

“You're an idiot,” he says. It's a catch all for every piece of gratitude, love, and exhaustion that he can't express. He finds that he's no longer cold, and that his body isn't quite ready to return to ash. 

“Yup! An idiot that's going to set you on fire!” Galo laughs, and the sound is much more welcome to Lio than his sniffles. 

Really, there's no need for the Promare to watch over him. If he can make a fire fighter want to become a fire starter, he can do anything.


End file.
